Adam & Eve
by brightskysendless
Summary: The house that she sparked to life is brilliant and golden and full of vibrant silks and thick brocade, pearls and jet and lace. There are oriental vases so beautiful that they can steal your heart away down leafy paths blooming with peonies and dragons.


"Adam & Eve"

I. Butterflies

The house that she sparked to life is brilliant and golden and full of vibrant silks and thick brocade, pearls and jet and delicate lace. There are oriental vases so beautiful that they can steal your heart away down leafy paths blooming with painted peonies and hidden dragons slick with jade green enamel. But she only wanders numbly through the long corridors, her hands whispering among the soft, heavy folds of her dress while the rest of the masked household dance with faces upturned like butterflies.

II. Flight

The house that she sparked to life is filled with sunlight in the late afternoon, and with the ocean and the sweet scent of honey locust in the slow dusk hours. But best of all, it is full of her warm twin brother, who can still illuminate her world with his big smiles and steady voice. Viola flees to this house and into these arms to close her burning eyes, and rest her electric thoughts. She flees into his safe embrace with her hollow ears and brittle tongue, scoured clean and empty by Orsino's passion. (Orsino weeps over her in the small, secret hours of the night, but even his tears blazon trails of red across the moon of her face.)

III. Embers

Let me tell you a story:

Once upon a time Viola's heart broke for the fair Orsino as he pined away for the dark Olivia. It cracked in half again at the reminder of her own dear brother, flung into the cruel sea which she saw shining in Olivia's eyes. When she could no longer bear the agony of being so close to Orsino (who lit himself on fire inside and let poetry drip from his mouth like embers, bitter and charred and sweet) she would run to Olivia's side. Olivia's eyes were still, deep water, reflecting sky and stars and her dead brother's face. Olivia would coyly reach and touch Viola's cheek, and whisper beautiful words like flocks of mourning doves. Then Viola wouldn't be able to bear it any longer, and would race back along the cliffs to where Orsino waited with baited breath for her return.

IV. Ghosts

Viola woke the ghosts in the walls and the gloomy stairwells of Olivia's house; the laughter and the voices and the distant music in the darkness. Viola's hair shone like a banner in that grim house, and her voice was like a lighthouse –leading Olivia back out into the garden among the violets and the lilies and the honey bees. Viola teased smiles to bloom on Olivia's lips like pale pink rosebuds, and slowly Olivia began to fill the house again with arms full of irises and gladiolas and her own sweet laughter like the sun on water.

V. Porcelain

Now, in the end, she is left drained and restless, her stiff porcelain heart as blue as her china eyes.

VI. Moon

Orsino pleads with her. _Please, please,_ he begs, _tell me why you are so pale, why you flee my touch. _Viola only turns away and hides her face behind hands scarred by the passage of his tears.

VII. Waif

When it is too much, she escapes into her brother's house and drifts through the halls she brought to life, touching all of the vases and orchid petals as if she could somehow steal back her heart through the calloused pads of her finger tips. Lately though, even her brother's strong arms and identical hands can't bring her comfort any longer- not when Olivia sits quietly next to them with hands folded demurely in her lap and burns Viola with her velvet stare.

VIII. Birds

And then there comes a day when Sebastian is absent, and Olivia is the one who pulls Viola into her lap and strokes her wind-teased hair. Gently, gently she strokes and whispers endearments in Viola's ear, rocking her and crooning the song that her mother sang to her in the cradle. It is a song about white birds and sky that reflects the sea; about birds turning into clouds and clouds turning into dreams, and a little girl who dreams of birds and wishes them into the sky so that they can sing songs about the sea. Viola twists in Olivia's arms then, feeling trapped by the song as her mind follows the flight of the birds and recognizes her heart for the blue of the sea. Olivia murmurs soothing words in her ear and then kisses the top of her head, letting her lips linger for a minute too long before softly, softly trailing the kiss lower to alight upon Viola's lips like the brush of a butterfly wing.

IX. Mirrors

_Why? _Viola cries. _Why did you choose Sebastian? _Her eyes are like mirrors.

_Because I knew that my love would break you, dear one, little bird. I could see it in your eyes._

_Too late. _She says as she turns away.

X. Sleight-of-hand

Feste arrives one day with a twang of lute strings and a swirl of patchwork cloak; his grey eyes so very clear. When Viola runs now, she runs to him and they sit together for hours at the edge of the sea, playing at sleight-of-hand. Feste performs his illusions for her, and watches with his crooked smile as she plays them back to him automatically, her hands trailing through the air like seashells and bleached wale bone.

XI. Sea

Viola's eyes slowly begin to fill with sea as it works it's way during the night inside her dreams and fills her chest with the sound of crashing waves and the smell of the missing tears that she never shed. It calls to her in the early hours of the morning, in a voice like still water beneath the churning waves, the secret places of shuddering light and rippled color. The continuous salt in the air sticks to her skin, turning it bitter and streaky, and her hair into a tangled wreck, but Viola refuses to bathe.

XII. Escape

_Take me with you_. Viola says.

So Antonio wraps her in the soft gray blanket and she rests mutely in the little boat as the shore grows smaller and smaller behind, and the boundless sea rises to meet them with open arms. There is a release then- and Viola sighs, feeling the curve of the earth beneath her, the joint of the horizon where it meets the water and the world ends. She looks forward, and Antonio looks behind (dreaming of her brother maybe) and the men on Antonio's ship start up their salt slicked rowing songs as their captain and the bright-haired girl approach in the little boat.

(I have known the love of Adam, and that of Eve, but over them I have chosen the sea)

()()()

**Note: This is a repost of a version I wrote three years ago. I'm not quite happy with the characterization yet, but at balaustinus's prompting, here it is, back from the dead and semi-revamped. Atmosphere inspired by the movie.**


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